Lately I've been wanting to brush up on my gouache skills. I've always really admired the medium and I used to work almost exclusively in watercolor when I was younger. I tend to like a theme when I practice technique. It helps keep me focused on just the tools and not to much the concept or composition.

Shark week has come and gone but I remember sitting down to sketch some sharks. I was super inspired by my Drink & Draw friend, J.P. Vine and his incredible paintings of different sharks. I was excited to draw some of my own! I'm not sure what was up that day, but I was having a terrible time. Things just weren't working and I couldn't get the sharks to look the way I wanted them to. I remembered that I had yet to warm up for a bit so I grabbed a sketchpad and began to doodle to loosen up. What came out was little scribbles of a horrible little creature: the Shark Cat.

The initial design was based on the thresher shark. I found that the short face and extremely large eyes worked well with the cat aesthetic. However, as I kept sketching, I noticed that almost any shark species could be adapted.

I had found my theme. Lately I've been working to paint more sketches of the Shark Cat variety. The Shark Cat above isn't really focused on any sort of species but it was my first little painting of one. In my more recent drawings of the creatures, I've been looking to reference of sharks to really represent the different species. It's been so much fun as they are such a diverse and amazing group!

Here are the Mako and Lemon Shark Cats I've just completed. I took these poses from the initial doodles I did when I first started. They are common poses I've seen my cat(s) take from time to time and are pretty iconic of cats.

working cover

The Shark Cats have been really popular online so far and I'm really excited to share the others I've come up with since these last two. I'm going to compile them into a small desktop calendar (and probably a larger wall calendar) for 2015. I'll have the calendars ready by the end of October. If you subscribe to my newsletter, you'll be the first to know when they are available. You can subscribe here, if you're interested. Otherwise, watch this space and my social media accounts for when they go on sale. I will also have them available at CTN this November. :)